US 8379538

Here's a concise summary of US Patent 8379538:

US Patent 8379538: Model-Driven Monitoring Architecture

• Title: Model-driven monitoring architecture
• Assignee: Valtrus Innovations Ltd (Current)
• Inventors: Jerome Rolia, Keith I. Farkas, Martin F. Arlitt, Sven Graupner
• Filing Date: June 22, 2005
• Issue Date: February 19, 2013
• Abstract: The patent describes a method for providing a machine-readable monitoring model that maintains the configuration of a monitoring environment. An element within this environment reads the model and adapts its operation according to the defined configuration.

Plain-Language Overview of Independent Claims:

• Claim 1 (Method): This claim details a method for monitoring. It involves providing a machine-readable model that describes how a monitoring system is configured, specifically including a "metric model" that identifies which monitoring data a data collection agent gathers. A component within the monitoring system then reads this machine-readable model and adjusts its own operations to match the specified configuration, particularly the metric model.
• Claim 7 (Method): This claim describes a method where a machine-readable monitoring model initially defines the setup of a monitoring environment. If this configuration changes, the machine-readable model automatically updates to reflect the alteration. Consequently, a part of the monitoring environment reads this updated model and automatically adjusts its functions to the newly changed configuration.
• Claim 13 (System): This claim outlines a system designed for monitoring. It comprises a monitored environment (with components and tools for data collection), a model-driven monitoring environment (with data consumers and reporting services), and a data collection agent that connects the instrumentation to the monitoring system. Central to this system is an "information services" component that includes a machine-readable monitoring model. This model defines the monitoring environment's setup, including the metric model that specifies collected data. The information services dynamically update this machine-readable model when changes occur in the monitored environment.
• Claim 17 (Article): This claim refers to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (like a hard drive). This medium stores instructions that, when executed by a processor, provide "information services logic." This logic is accessible to other parts of a monitoring environment and contains a machine-readable monitoring model. This model defines the configuration of the monitoring environment, including the metric model for data collection. The information services logic is designed to automatically modify this machine-readable monitoring model to ensure the monitoring environment is correctly configured in response to changes in a monitored environment.
• Claim 21 (System): This claim describes a system similar to Claim 13, including a dynamically changing monitored environment, a model-driven monitoring environment with data consumers and reporting services, a data collection agent, and information services with a machine-readable monitoring model that dynamically changes with monitored environment changes. This claim further specifies that the machine-readable monitoring model includes a meta-model (defining information structure), topology (relationships between elements), data consumer desires, and reporting network desires. Additionally, the system includes at least one tool to request data from monitoring sources, and a reporting network that connects and disconnects with this tool, with the tool registering and deregistering with the information services.

Litigation:
Based on the provided patent information, there are ongoing litigation cases related to US8379538 in various U.S. District Courts, including the Washington Western District Court (2:25-cv-01859), Texas Eastern District Court (2:25-cv-00556), and California Northern District Court (3:26-cv-00363).

As of April 26, 2026, a search for US8379538 in the CAFC 2026 dockets did not return any specific case entries.

Known litigation involving US Patent 8379538 is limited to the information directly provided by the Google Patents record for US8379538. While the current assignee, Valtrus Innovations Ltd, is involved in other patent litigation, the search results did not explicitly list US8379538 as a patent-in-suit in those separate cases.

Based on the Google Patents record (the authoritative full patent text), the following litigation is noted for US Patent 8379538:

• Jurisdiction: Washington Western District Court

  • Case Number: 2:25-cv-01859
  • Filing Date: Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Plaintiff(s): Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Defendant(s): Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Outcome/Current Status: The Google Patents page indicates "litigation" and "Critical" status, implying it is ongoing.

• Jurisdiction: Texas Eastern District Court

  • Case Number: 2:25-cv-00556
  • Filing Date: Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Plaintiff(s): Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Defendant(s): Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Outcome/Current Status: The Google Patents page indicates "litigation", implying it is ongoing.

• Jurisdiction: California Northern District Court

  • Case Number: 3:26-cv-00363
  • Filing Date: Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Plaintiff(s): Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Defendant(s): Not explicitly provided by the Google Patents page or external search results in relation to US8379538.
  • Outcome/Current Status: The Google Patents page indicates "litigation", implying it is ongoing.

Specific details regarding the plaintiffs, defendants, filing dates, and current status for these cases directly involving US8379538 were not readily available through the provided search parameters beyond what is stated on the Google Patents page. A search for US8379538 in CAFC dockets for 2026 did not yield specific case entries related to this patent.

Proceedings overview

There are no AIA trial proceedings (Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method) currently on file for US Patent 8379538. This indicates that the patent has not been subjected to PTAB challenges to date.

Strategic summary

As of May 23, 2026, all claims (1-21) of US8379538 are UNTESTED by any AIA trial proceeding at the PTAB. This means that no independent or dependent claims have been challenged or invalidated through IPR, PGR, or CBM trials.

The absence of PTAB proceedings means there is no estoppel landscape established under § 315(e)(2) for this patent. Any prior art grounds (under § 102 or § 103) that could be raised against the patent claims in an AIA trial are still available to a potential petitioner. There is no public record of the same petitioner filing multiple IPRs, nor any indication of aggressive PTAB appeals by the patent owner, or involvement of defensive aggregators.

Recommended next steps

Since no PTAB activity exists for US8379538, for a potential defendant facing assertion of this patent, the following is recommended:

• Prior Art Search: Conduct a thorough prior art search to identify potential grounds for an AIA trial (IPR or PGR, depending on the claims and filing date, though IPR is more common). The patent's priority date is June 22, 2005.
• Validity Analysis: Perform a detailed validity analysis of all asserted claims against any newly found or existing prior art, focusing on anticipation (§ 102) and obviousness (§ 103) grounds.
• Consider Petition Filing: If strong prior art grounds are identified, consider filing an IPR or PGR petition, especially if facing litigation. The absence of prior PTAB challenges means this avenue remains open without the burden of estoppel from previous proceedings.

Inventors

• Jerome Rolia (employer: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP)
• Keith I. Farkas (employer: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP)
• Martin F. Arlitt (employer: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP)
• Sven Graupner (employer: Hewlett Packard Development Co LP)

No unusual patterns, such as all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, are determinable from the provided information.

Original assignee

The original assignee named on the issued patent is Hewlett Packard Development Co LP.
Hewlett Packard Development Co LP, as part of Hewlett-Packard Company, shipped numerous products embodying monitoring and data management claims. Their primary line of business was broad information technology, including hardware (servers, PCs), software (enterprise management, operating systems), and services.
Currently, Hewlett Packard Development Co LP is an operating subsidiary within the broader Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and HP Inc. (HPI) corporate structures, both of which are active operating companies.

Assignment timeline

• 2015-10-27 (executed) / recorded 2015-11-09 — Reel 016556/0060

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT
  • Assignor: HEWLETT-PACKARD DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, L.P.
  • Assignee: HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT LP
  • Correspondent: HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY, 3404 E. HARMONY ROAD, FORT COLLINS, CO 80528
  • Context: Internal reorganization following the split of Hewlett-Packard Company into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.

• 2021-02-18 (executed) / recorded 2021-02-22 — Reel 050186/0023

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT
  • Assignor: HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT LP
  • Assignee: VALTRUS INNOVATIONS LIMITED
  • Correspondent: VALTRUS INNOVATIONS LTD., 2800 E. MADISON ST., SUITE 200, SEATTLE, WA 98112
  • Context: Transfer to a patent assertion entity (NPE).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8379538
    2005 : Filed by HP Development Co LP
    2013 : Issued to HP Development Co LP
    2015 : Assigned to HPE Dev LP
    2021 : Assigned to Valtrus Innovations Ltd
    2025 : First infringement suit filed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer

   • Present. The patent was transferred from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, an operating company, to Valtrus Innovations Limited. Valtrus Innovations Limited's name, "Innovations Limited," is a common characteristic of shell entities. Furthermore, Valtrus Innovations Limited explicitly states on its website that it is "focused on licensing these patents" and is identified by Unified Patents as an NPE. The correspondent address on the assignment to Valtrus (Reel 050186/0023) is the company's own address, rather than a law firm, which is often seen with shell entities.

2. Known asserter in the chain

   • Present. Valtrus Innovations Limited is identified by Unified Patents as an NPE and is reported to be "backed by Irish patent monetization platform Key Patent Innovations". RPX also tracks Valtrus's litigation activities.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain

   • Not present. The correspondent for the 2015 assignment was Hewlett-Packard Company (Reel 016556/0060), while the correspondent for the 2021 assignment was Valtrus Innovations Ltd. itself (Reel 050186/0023). There is no repetition of the same attorney or firm across these recorded assignments for this specific patent.

4. Cascading transfers

   • Not present. There are only two assignments in the chain. The first was an internal corporate reorganization in 2015, and the second was the transfer to Valtrus in 2021. These do not represent multiple consecutive transfers through chained LLCs within a short period.

5. Pre-litigation transfer

   • Not present. The patent was assigned to Valtrus Innovations Limited on 2021-02-18 (executed) / 2021-02-22 (recorded) (Reel 050186/0023). The earliest reported litigation case associated with this patent was filed in 2025 (e.g., Washington Western District Court, 2:25-cv-01859). This gap of several years is well outside the typical six-month window for pre-litigation transfers.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale

   • Not present. There is no indication from the assignment records or general knowledge that Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. or Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP underwent bankruptcy proceedings leading to the sale of this patent.

7. Privateering

   • Unclear. While Valtrus Innovations Limited acquired an extensive patent portfolio originating from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, and then commenced litigation, the available data does not provide specific evidence that HPE is actively directing or financially benefiting from Valtrus's assertion campaigns against HPE's competitors.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE)

   • Not present. The patent is currently owned by Valtrus Innovations Limited, which is identified as an NPE actively asserting patents. It has not been acquired by a defensive aggregator like RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or Open Invention Network.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence

This verdict is supported by two strong signals: the transfer to a known patent assertion entity, Valtrus Innovations Limited, as recorded on 2021-02-22 (Reel 050186/0023), and the nature of Valtrus Innovations Limited as a shell entity primarily focused on licensing and assertion, as confirmed by Unified Patents. The company's own address as the correspondent on the assignment record further supports its shell nature.

USPTO Assignment Center search for US8379538

To identify the most relevant prior art for US Patent 8379538, I will examine the patent's citations. The patent text itself incorporates several co-pending and commonly assigned US patent applications by reference, indicating their close relationship and potential as relevant prior art.

Here are the prior art references explicitly mentioned and incorporated by reference within US Patent 8379538, along with their potential implications for anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102:

1. US Patent Application Ser. No. 11/158,776

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/158,776, titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUSLY CONFIGURING A REPORTING NETWORK”
• Publication/Filing Date: June 22, 2005 (This is the filing date of US11/158,756, which US8379538 claims priority from and is related to this application, suggesting the same priority date).
• Brief Description: This application describes an exemplary overlay network that gathers, stores, provides value-added processing, and/or correlates monitoring data received from data collection agents. It also discusses how reporting services may reconfigure the overlay network based on changes in data consumer desires, data collector availability, or network topology.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This reference appears highly relevant to claims involving the reporting network and its autonomous configuration, particularly elements of Claim 4, 10, 16, and 21 that mention "information specifying reporting network desires" and the reporting network itself. It also generally relates to the system described in Claim 13 and 21, specifically regarding the reporting service.

2. US Patent Application Ser. No. 11/158,868

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/158,868, titled “SYSTEM FOR METRIC INTROSPECTION IN MONITORING SOURCES”
• Publication/Filing Date: June 22, 2005 (This is the filing date of US11/158,756, which US8379538 claims priority from and is related to this application, suggesting the same priority date).
• Brief Description: This application details metric introspection interfaces within monitoring sources that enable information services to access metric definitions.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This reference is relevant to how metric models are accessed and understood. It could potentially anticipate aspects of Claim 1, 7, 13, and 17, which discuss the "metric model identifying which monitoring data is collected at a data collection agent" and the information services comprising the machine-readable monitoring model.

3. US Patent Application Ser. No. 11/158,376

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/158,376, titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USING MACHINE-READABLE META-MODELS FOR INTERPRETING DATA MODELS IN A COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT”
• Publication/Filing Date: June 22, 2005 (This is the filing date of US11/158,756, which US8379538 claims priority from and is related to this application, suggesting the same priority date).
• Brief Description: This application describes how information service 101 includes a meta-model service that provides common or standard semantics for interpreting models and metrics. It further states that machine-readable metric meta-models define the structure (e.g., syntax) used by corresponding metric models, enabling monitoring tools to dynamically adapt and understand monitoring data from different sources.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This is highly relevant to claims that explicitly mention meta-models. Specifically, Claim 4, 10, 16, and 21, which state that the machine-readable monitoring model comprises "at least one meta-model that defines a structure of how information is represented in at least one data model," are directly impacted. It also informs the general concept of autonomous adaptation to configuration changes in Claim 1 and 7.

4. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/368,635

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/368,635, titled: “IMPROVING CONTENT CONSISTENCY IN A DATA ACCESS NETWORK SYSTEM”
• Publication/Filing Date: Not explicitly stated in US8379538, but it is described as "co-pending" and "commonly assigned" with an application number implying an earlier filing date than 11/158,756.
• Brief Description: This reference describes an exemplary scalable cache consistency mechanism that could be utilized to keep cached copies of topology and meta-model information up-to-date.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This reference is relevant to the consistency mechanisms for the monitoring model's information. It could potentially anticipate aspects of claims related to maintaining configuration information, such as the machine-readable monitoring model itself (Claim 1, 7, 13, 17, 21), particularly in scenarios where data is cached and needs to remain consistent.

These co-pending applications are crucial prior art as they were filed on the same day (or earlier, in the case of 09/368,635) as the priority application for US8379538 and are explicitly incorporated by reference, meaning their content is considered part of the disclosure of US8379538. Therefore, any elements claimed in US8379538 that are fully disclosed in these earlier-filed, commonly owned applications could be anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102.

An analysis of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 typically requires identifying specific prior art references that, either individually or in combination, would have rendered the claimed invention obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention. This analysis necessitates the identification of each reference's teachings and a clear motivation for combining them.

Absence of Specific Prior Art References for Combination:

The provided patent text for US8379538 includes a "Description of Related Art" section, which outlines the general landscape and deficiencies of monitoring systems preceding the invention. This section describes problems such as:

• Traditional monitoring architectures requiring manual configuration and re-configuration for changes in the monitored environment (e.g., adding metrics, moving applications, changes in file formats).
• Data collection agents providing monitoring data to statically configured repositories that presuppose metric identity and environment topology.
• Monitoring data repositories having schemas that do not tolerate changes and require manual maintenance.
• Monitoring tools also requiring manual maintenance by users to support changes in instrumentation systems (e.g., different metric names, units, or reporting frequencies).
• Reporting networks being insensitive to the behavior or configuration of the underlying monitored infrastructure, potentially impacting performance.

While this section effectively defines the problems in the prior art that US8379538 aims to solve, it does not provide specific patent or non-patent references (e.g., journal articles, specific patents by different inventors) that can be formally combined for an obviousness analysis. The general mention of "Hewlett-Packard's OpenView Reporter product" and "system activity reporter (sar)" serve as examples of existing products exhibiting these problems, rather than distinct, combinable prior art disclosures.

Furthermore, the "CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS" section lists several co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. patent applications (U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/158,776, 11/158,868, 11/158,777, and 11/158,376). These applications are incorporated by reference into US8379538 and share the same priority date. As such, they are generally considered part of the same inventive entity's disclosure or patent family and would typically not be used as prior art for an obviousness combination against the claims of US8379538.

Conclusion Regarding Combinations of References:

Given that the provided "Prior Art section of this page" (interpreted as the "Description of Related Art") does not list distinct, combinable prior art references, it is not possible to formally identify specific combinations of references that would render the claims of US8379538 obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 with high confidence.

Inventive Step Over Described Prior Art Problems:

Despite the absence of specific references for combination, the patent explicitly details the inventive step over the general knowledge of the prior art as described in the "Description of Related Art." The core of US8379538's invention lies in providing a model-driven monitoring architecture that achieves autonomous adaptation to configuration changes, thereby overcoming the pervasive need for manual intervention in traditional systems.

Specifically, the invention introduces:

1. A machine-readable monitoring model: This model describes the configuration of both the monitoring and monitored environments.
2. Comprehensive configuration description: The model maintains information such as metric models (identifying collected data), meta-models (defining data structure), topology (interrelationships of elements), data consumer desires, and reporting network desires and objectives.
3. Dynamic updating: The machine-readable monitoring model autonomously updates to reflect changes in the monitoring or monitored environments.
4. Autonomous adaptation: Elements of the monitoring environment (e.g., monitoring tools, reporting network, monitoring sources) read this dynamically updated model and autonomously adapt their operations to the changed configuration, without requiring manual re-configuration by a user.

The motivation for a person having ordinary skill in the art to move from the described prior art problems to the claimed solution would be to address the documented inefficiencies, inflexibility, and potential data loss associated with manual configuration and static systems in dynamically changing environments. While the desire for automation was known, the specific architecture of a dynamically updating, machine-readable model that enables autonomous adaptation across various components of a monitoring system (including handling changes in metric definitions through meta-models and dynamically configuring reporting networks) addresses these prior art shortcomings in a novel way according to the patent's own description. The patent highlights that traditional solutions failed to provide such autonomous adaptability and dynamic understanding of monitoring data changes.